Unclean

by A. M. Manay

  “Crone on crutches,” Hana swore, eyebrows high.

  “The healer couldn’t undo it?” Shiloh gasped. “I’d think a child’s curse would be reversible . . .”

  “He didn’t try. My parents’ soothsayer told him not to. She wrote to Tarwin instead, had them come get me. Vreeland had a surplus of princesses, so they let them take me. It’s not as though anyone was going to want a crazy princess for a bride anyway. Mother Falcon said that she would heal me if, after a year with them, I still wanted her to.”

  “And you didn’t?” Shiloh asked.

  “And I didn’t. It turns out that there’s a long tradition of blind seers for a reason. In my desperation, I had stumbled on the fact that with one sense missing, I was able to control the extra one.”

  “Sometimes tragedies have a way of working out in the end,” Hana concluded.

  “Sometimes,” Shiloh sighed. “But not always.”

  They stood in the chill of a late spring morning, awaiting the arrival of their queen and her new husband, come to visit the Holy Father. Row upon row of them waited, in their penitents’ garb, as colorless and damp as the fog. When, at last, the royal couple and their retinue arrived, Shiloh studied Esta carefully, seeking she knew not what. In any event, she did not find what she was looking for.

  They were under orders to look jubilant, and Shiloh clapped and cheered as instructed once they’d been released from their bows and curtsies.

  They watched the Patriarch greet queen and consort. He blessed them ostentatiously, and Esta favored the assembled with what Shiloh found to be an incredibly patronizing speech about faith, repentance, and redemption.

  Smug. That’s how she looks. Smug enough that I’d like to knock that crown into the mud.

  Eventually, finally, their betters disappeared into the tower, and Shiloh and her fellow captives were sent along to their duties. Fenroh had informed her the evening before that he would be occupied with the royal visit, and he’d assigned her to cleaning duty in the Temple. It was, quite frankly, a tremendous relief to have a day free from witnessing his brutality.

  Her relief was, alas, short-lived. She’d only just finished pumping water into a washbasin when Fenroh appeared, beckoning urgently.

  Shiloh ran to him. “Yes, honored brother?” she panted.

  “The queen wishes to speak with you,” he informed her.

  “What? Me? Really?” Shiloh blurted.

  “Have you known me to be prone to jests, Miss Teethborn?” he replied coldly.

  “My apologies, honored brother. I was surprised,” Shiloh hastened to answer.

  “Come along,” he told her, and she had to hustle to keep up with him. He pointed to the elevator. “We mustn’t keep Her Grace waiting.”

  The contraption began its swift ascent, and Shiloh’s ears popped.

  “You should know, child, that I served as her confessor, as well as her mother’s, for a number of years before our exile. Do not think you can turn Her Grace against me,” Fenroh warned.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it, honored brother,” Shiloh lied, her stomach tying itself in knots.

  At last, Fenroh led her to an opulent receiving room and announced her.

  Shiloh entered and curtsied deeply.

  “Shiloh,” Esta greeted her warmly. “Come closer.”

  Still wary, Shiloh obeyed her sovereign and approached. The ladies-in-waiting scattered to the edges of the room.

  “She looks thin, Fen,” Esta scolded, shooting a look at Fenroh, who waited to be dismissed with his hands clasped behind his back.

  “Fasting is good for the soul, Your Grace,” he replied smoothly. “She’s a very devout girl. I assure you, her health is much on my mind.”

  “Good. Leave us, honored brother,” Esta said. “We women need a moment alone.” Fenroh bowed and disappeared.

  “I hope you are enjoying your time in this holy place, Shiloh,” Esta began.

  Shiloh swallowed the rage that bloomed in her chest. Not trusting her voice, she merely nodded.

  “Brother Fenroh has long been a great comfort to me. I imagine he is to you as well.”

  Oh, he’s just lovely. She merely nodded again.

  “I have something to ask you,” Esta began.

  Shiloh braced herself.

  “Tell me about when you found Jasin Gray’s body,” Esta commanded.

  Shiloh swallowed. Best not to lie, she told herself. “Lord Kepler was in an enormous pool of blood, Your Grace. He had scrawled a curse on the walls with it. It was quite horrible, Your Grace.”

  Esta’s shoulders sagged. “A curse on my line?” the queen asked.

  Silas must have told her, and she didn’t believe him.

  “Yes, Your Grace, but I do not know if such a thing is even possible,” Shiloh confirmed. “I thought it was the final, pointless act of a desperate man.” She screwed up courage enough to ask, “May I ask why you seem so frightened, Your Grace?”

  “No, you may not. And say nothing of this to Fenroh. You may return to . . . whatever it is you do here,” the queen dismissed her.

  “Mostly we suffer, Your Grace,” Shiloh told her, screwing up her courage in the hope that the queen might remember that they had once been friendly. “Every day is a misery.”

  For a moment, there was a flash of pity in her royal face, but then she turned cold. “Life is pain,” she said, then waved Shiloh away.

  Hot tears stung Shiloh’s eyes as the doors closed behind her.

  The crown doesn’t become her.

  She’s starting to look like her mother.

  “What did she want?” Fenroh whispered urgently. He hustled her into the stairwell and down into his freshly repaired office.

  “She ordered me not to tell you, honored brother,” Shiloh replied, panting a little from the run down two flights of stairs.

  Fenroh’s wand was in his hand before she could blink. “Is this really a game you want to play with me, Shiloh?” he asked, brows raised in warning.

  “No, not particularly,” she admitted. Shiloh didn’t bother lying. What did she care about affairs of state and political gossip these days? Why should she protect Esta’s secret?

  “Her Grace is afraid of a curse cast by Jasin Gray with his dying breath. A curse upon Rischar’s line.” She watched the wheels turning in Fenroh’s head.

  “She fears for the baby?” he asked.

  “I imagine so. She did not confide in me,” Shiloh replied.

  “But she has not miscarried. So all must be well,” Fenroh protested.

  “Not necessarily, honored brother,” Shiloh warned.

  “Wouldn’t she miscarry if the babe were to die?” Fenroh asked with the confusion of a man not at all versed in women’s matters.

  “Sometimes not right away. It can be very dangerous,” Shiloh explained with more patience than she felt. “Or maybe there is no baby at all. There is such a thing as false pregnancy. A desperate woman can imagine herself into such a state. Or there could be a mass of some sort, a cancer or some other growth. Her Grace should see a proper healer. On some occasions, these things can be fatal,” she warned. “Surgery may be necessary.”

  Fenroh shook his head. “In Gerne, surgery is forbidden. It is considered blasphemous. To even suggest it for a queen, anointed by the Gods . . .”

  It took all of Shiloh’s self-control not to roll her eyes. Of course, it is. “Well, then, I fear for Esta and her heir. If the Patriarch wants her to have a living child, His Holiness may need to sanctify surgery.”

  Fenroh’s eyes flashed, and Shiloh wondered if she had gone too far.

  “I would take no pleasure in a sad outcome, whatever my own grudge against Her Grace and His Holiness may be,” she added softly. “The last thing I want is a war for succession. I know full well how much a war costs the innocent. Better than anyone.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “I almost believe you. Go back to work in the Temple. I must return to His Holiness’s side. Breathe not a word of this,”
the priest ordered.

  Saying nothing in reply, Shiloh bowed and disappeared into the corridor.

  “I think there is something amiss with the queen’s baby,” Shiloh whispered to Bluebell in the dark of night.

  “I know. I saw, when I served her tea this afternoon. There is no child,” Bluebell confirmed.

  “How will her husband react, do you think?” Shiloh asked.

  Bluebell rustled the blankets as she turned over to face Shiloh. “I think the honeymoon will be over. Oh, he’ll try for another. But if the queen fails again to produce a prince . . . It could be ugly. I fear for her. For her sister. For the kingdom. But mostly for you.”

  Have It Your Way

  Little Shiloh looked up with alarm when Edmun threw a book across the room. It hit the wall with enough force to rattle the shelves.

  “Master?” she asked, wide-eyed.

  “What a worthless pack of lies,” Edmun spat.

  Shiloh hopped to her feet and crossed the room to pick up the offending volume. “Tales of Triumph: The Siblings’ War by Gordan Courtborn. That’s your half-brother, is he not?”

  “He is. Much to my eternal shame,” Edmun confirmed. “And the fool sent me a copy just to taunt me.”

  “What does he lie about?” Shiloh asked. She crossed to sit next to her teacher.

  “What doesn’t he?” Edmun groused.

  “I mean, which lie made you throw the book, master?” she asked, persistent as always.

  Edmun heaved a great sigh. “There was a particular atrocity during the protracted fight for the Range. An old nun kept a boarding school for Unclean children. She was suspected of being a spy for Alissa. The Patriarch’s men, the gray-robes, were fighting on Rischar’s side. They killed her and all the children besides, then the rest of the village for good measure, leaving nothing but Deadlands behind. Scores of innocent people, lost. She wasn’t even working for us.

  “It was Fenroh, the Patriarch’s son, who did it with his group of hand-picked marauders. He never put much value on Unclean lives in the first place. Moreover, he wanted to make an example of them, so people would know that if they helped our side, their entire community would be slaughtered. And this book of lies blames the murders on the Feralfolk in Alissa’s employ. Now, I have no love for those atheist mercenaries, but they were not in the habit of killing women and children.”

  Edmun smirked a little. “The Patriarch’s brat got caught, though, after the next battle. He was leading his band behind our lines, terrorizing the people. Spent over a year as a prisoner, the little monster. All his men were executed.”

  “What do you want me to do with the book, master?” Shiloh asked, eyes sad.

  “Chuck it in the fire where it belongs.”

  The summer sun was warm on their shoulders as they watched the priests prepare to kill the condemned. Birds circled overhead, casting shadows that Shiloh hoped would be enough to camouflage her excitement, her anticipation, her fear.

  It had been a long wait through the springtime. Day after day, she’d had to face Fenroh. Day after day, she had waited for Veena to die and for the ax to fall. Day after day, she had wondered if she would ever see the sky again, ever get a chance to set her escape plan into motion.

  At last, the day had come. Please, Gods, be with us. Steady my hand. Steady my heart.

  The Patriarch began chanting the prayers for the dead, and the prisoners were shoved to their knees, their chains splashing into the holy water.

  “Now,” Shiloh whispered.

  The birds dove, screaming, straight at the priests—all but one falcon. The men in gray, the two women in red, the one man in blue—all fumbled for wands or crossed their arms over their heads in a desperate effort to protect their faces from beak and claw.

  Shiloh held out her hand. Her wand dropped into it, delivered by Honey, and Shiloh sighed with satisfaction.

  Her first act was to disarm their enemies. She had never before stood against so many, and she prayed that the tower would enhance her magic. Her prayer was answered. Every wand, sword, and spear, every instrument of violence, flew into the air. They formed a bladed cyclone that dropped the weapons into the empty part of the courtyard, behind the prisoners, far out of reach of their stunned owners.

  “Let us go home, and stop the madness of this so-called ‘Purification.’” Shiloh cried, loudly enough to carry across the reflecting pool. “No one has to die today.”

  “How dare you!” the Patriarch screeched. “Kill her!”

  No one moved.

  “For your own safety, let these people go!”

  Still, no one moved. No one even breathed. Fenroh caught her gaze and held it. She couldn’t quite read his face. But it made her stomach hurt to look at it.

  Shiloh sighed heavily. “Have it your way,” she muttered.

  Shiloh’s next act was to remove the chains binding the condemned. They rose from the water and turned as one to face the priests who would have killed them. Silence reigned for but a moment. Then months of pent-up fear and rage erupted as those prisoners took justice into their own hands, beating their now weaponless captors. Vinsen and the Vestals fled back into the tower.

  Shiloh tore her eyes away and tried to ignore the pandemonium.

  She intended her own rebellion to be one primarily of creation rather than destruction. She intended to defy what Fenroh wanted her to be even as she attacked her enemies.

  Shiloh leveled her wand at the tower, at the ribbons of Elton’s steel wrapping around its height to meet at the spire far above. She began to chant a spell she could have said in her sleep, the countercurse that she had repeated over and over as she’d healed acre after acre of Deadlands in the north. Day after day, she had knelt down on the hard, black ground to force out the dark magic that had rendered it lifeless. Day after day, she had stood up again to walk across soft, fertile earth, her shoes sinking into it as she’d crossed to the next patch in need of healing.

  The crowd’s heads turned up in unison when the tower began to hum and glow. Next came the shaking. Stones rattled like bones in a casting jar.

  The men and women slated for execution began to wade desperately across the reflecting pool. Any better paths of escape were blocked by locked fences and walls. Prisoners on the other side of the water rushed out to help their fellows to safety. Those priests who remained conscious tried to follow them, only to be kicked back into the water.

  Shiloh saw none of this. All the magic she hadn’t been able to use since her arrest, since Honey had saved her wand from confiscation, she poured out into the tower.

  And that Citadel amplified her magic, made it radiate in all directions, rushing through the air to touch even the most distant parts of the kingdom. That Citadel, which had been filled with such suffering, caused Shiloh’s power to rain down upon every inch of black, crusted earth that her mother’s war had left behind. That Citadel allowed Shiloh to break the chains that those old curses had wrapped around the land. And that Citadel turned what might have been the work of years into the labor of mere minutes.

  Shiloh fell to her knees. What had been black and hard under her feet was now damp soil, ready for planting. The restored ground shook beneath her, and the tower trembled before her eyes. She raised her wand again as terrified screams rang around her. She raised a glowing barrier just before debris began to fall from the tottering monument to religious authority, using a cylinder of wards to ensure that the tower would crumble where it stood, that its rubble would not wash over its liberated prisoners.

  The prison’s former wardens, on the other hand, did not much benefit from her protection. As the Citadel began to collapse into its subterranean levels, the ground at the edge of the pool opened up, and the water rushed into the void, carrying most of the priests with it to be crushed in the rubble.

  Behind her, Hana and Jonn pried open the gates and herded their fellow prisoners away from the tower, urging them through so that when Shiloh let her magic go, they would be safely on t
he other side of the tall wall that formed the inner ring of the complex.

  For what felt like hours, Shiloh held her ward fast as steel bent and tumbling stone crashed against the magical barrier. She held it still as Bluebell and Keelie hauled her to her feet and led her, stumbling backwards, toward freedom.

  Finally, Bluebell whispered into Shiloh’s ear, “Sister, it is done. We’re all through the gate.”

  Shiloh exhaled, and her wand fell from her shaking hand. She swayed. The last thing she heard, as her eyes rolled back, was the cheering.

  The residents of Elderton had fled. Perhaps they feared retribution from the emancipated prisoners. At any rate, the freed took that as permission to eat their food and drink their wine. The twilight sky burned strangely above them; the ruined tower glowed an orange-pink with the aftereffects of Shiloh’s magic, matching the sunset to the west.

  Shiloh awoke in the middle of someone’s rooftop garden. Hana placed a tumbler into her hand, and Shiloh took several grateful swallows of strong apple cider.

  “How long was I out?” she then asked.

  “Half a day,” Hana replied. Behind her stood Bluebell and Keelie, who bent to help Shiloh to her feet.

  “Any injuries? Casualties?” Shiloh asked. “Among our own, I mean.”

  The roof was high enough that she could peer over the concentric walls to see the remains of the Citadel. The twisted wreck of it still stood quite tall. It continued to settle, setting off little avalanches of debris. It would be the work of years to salvage the material for other uses, if people weren’t too frightened to do so.

  Gazing upon the wreckage was a bit like watching the clouds; one began to see shapes and figures—a rabbit here, a horse there.

  “Just bumps and bruises among the freed, as far as today’s excitement is concerned. Some of the folks from the Pit are in rough shape, though,” Bluebell answered. “They’ve got infected wounds and hexmarks to contend with. And some of the prisoners were there long enough that they are frightened of freedom, skittish as colts. Others are just wandering around, or staring off into space.